Saturday, September 19, 2009

I'm with Jenny on her assessment of this week: not very exciting. SO, here's my grand-tabulous plan!

Buy:(4) Pepsi 12-packs, 4/$12

Use:-(4) $0.25/1 Pepsi fridge pack-$8 ECB

Total Due: $3.00Get back: $3.00 ECB

............... Yep... That's it! I'm getting my cheap Pepsi for the spouse, taking my $3 ECB, and running. It will be weird to go back to CVS with only $3 ECB. These one-stop shopping trips have spoiled me good. :-)

It has been a WHILE since I've ventured to Walmart for anything; I've said before that it's just a little more difficult to coupon there because the prices vary so much and I have to go off of lists from areas not even remotely close to me at times. But Deal Seeking Mom posted a couple of updates this past week, so I had to go check them out. Overall, I was actually pretty successful! I usually only end up saving 30% or so there because of huge price variety.

I'll post a few of her deals found AND what I encountered at my local store just to give you an idea. Some were STILL decent deals, just different. If there's no price mod in brackets, the deal was the same!

Friday, September 18, 2009

I took a week off from shopping just... well, just because! Because you have to. There weren't a whole lot of very exciting deals at most of my stores, although I did hit up CVS for another One-Transaction-Wonder (that won't happen again for awhile; I'm planning to burn up my last big stash of ECBs this week). And this week has been crazy so tonight was my first night to really get out to shop.

This week was another Mega Sale at Kroger (see Jenny at Southern Savers for the list!). I don't know about anyone else but after the last one I was kind of disappointed. Not a WHOLE lot of free or super-super cheap stuff. In fact I told DH that this was a "high-end" Mega Sale b/c I spent more than I ever have on a Mega Sale since I started couponing. Still, I didn't do too bad. I only grabbed 10 participating items, but I confirmed or found some other great deals, too! Here are my favorites:

This is the same deal as last week with the Softsoap bodywash AND Irish Springs.... Is this a MONTH-long ECB deal, maybe? Now I did NOT check for any shelf tags while in the store because I had no idea this might still be going... But if any of you all have extra Softsoap coupons lying around, it may be worth it to go snag a bottle and see what happens...

Let me know if you get ECB again and if this deal is advertised where you are or not!

Monday, September 7, 2009

I came home from camping on Sunday only to turn myself around in the shower so I could go straight to a funeral service for one of my recent students... Frankly, I am still deeply saddened by the loss of such a promising young life... and I was having a really hard time shaking myself back to normal after the services. I thought that maybe a quick run to spend my $13.99 in ECBs at CVS would be good to get my mind focused on something else for a short while.

Jenny at Southern Savers has the BIG list for CVS and you can also view the actual ad scan here. I did not even really touch her Grand Plan (I notice I've been deviating from it a lot more... is that good?? Or is that why I've spent more out of pocket??) because I had twice as many ECBs to start, and I was missing a lot of the good coupons for things like Neutrogena and Loreal. Overall, I about broke even when you considered what I earned BACK... but I'm still trying to get AHEAD with little to nothing out of pocket in the first place! ARGH.

...... I needed the TP and had intended to use some of these ECBs for free paper goods anyway last week. The Aussie was a good deal with the ECB it spit back out (IMO) even though I didn't have a coupon for it. My total OOP SHOULD have been roughly $1.95, plus tax on ~$40 in items.

Jenny's site said you should be able to use the $1 coupon with the Get FREE wyb X coupon... but I think the CVS computers calculate those 2 coupons as covering 3 items, not 2. Basically after they scanned the $1 coupon, the FREE coupon beeped and told them there were too many items. Now, would it have worked if I'd had a little random filler item, or did I need to buy 3 CG items? I'm not sure.

So, I had them void the $1 and scan the FREE coupon instead. The FREE coupon was weird because it didn't state a max of ANY kind on it. Nothing. No direction what-so-ever. But I found out that the max is the non-sale price of the foundation ($6.19 for me). So, it worked, but in order for your Face Product to be truly FREE... it had to be less than whatever the regular foundation price was. This added almost $3 to my overall... SO:

Total OOP w/ tax: $5.75 + $2.77 = $8.52 (Saved 79%... still GRRRRRR)

Got Back: $8 ECB

Shelf Cost of everything? $40.62

I'm really going to start looking for ways to figure the tax ahead of time and see if I can get my ECB to cover that too. It's not a HUGE deal but it's messing up my projections of how much I'm supposed to spend and making me do double takes before I leave the store. Any ideas? I'm listening!

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Wow. That was fast! The rest of this past week was spent trying to ditch the crud in advance of the holiday weekend and once that started, away it went! I know this is late but I wanted to post up how I did on a last-minute run to Kroger on Friday night. My spouse had left for the mountains ahead of me to secure a good campsite b/c past experience has taught us there are NONE to be found come Saturday on Labor Day weekends. I went to dinner with friends directly after work, then decided to run to Kroger to grab Pepsis (b/c they were on their great Buy 4, Get 1 FREE deal) and a few free items.

Overall, it was not a banner trip but then it wasn't meant to be. Those darned Pepsis always tweak my totals... ;-) It's pretty funny that if I don't save at least 50%, I now get really disappointed in myself, even when I know it can't be helped!

I have done WAAAAAY better, I know! And I only used about $7 in coupons! ....??? The main thing is that I went in for the Pepsis, grabbed a few unplanned things, and only found a few of the freebies I wanted. FYI: The night before the first University of TN game.... things can go fast on those shelves.

It doesn't seem like a whole lot for $27! ... Honestly? I have no idea how much the shakers were. I had to get up super early on Saturday so I came home, jotted down the big numbers and tossed my receipt. They may have been a couple bucks a piece but I really wanted some. I used to have a stash of dozens from my student gamedays but those have long since been given away, disintegrated, or become cat toys (and then disintegrated).

Sometimes you just can't go strictly by the playbook, eh? With the exception of veggies and meat, I'm going to try to stick to the rules better this week.

My Profile

I'm not content if I don't have at least 6+ hobbies/interests that I can hop in/out of on a regular basis. I seem to constantly be on the search for the perfect pair of brown shoes, grey trousers, and "Day" dress (though I could probably live in jeans & sneakers or better: yoga pants). I have never been able to fathom $4 per DAY coffee habits but I can completely withstand the guilt from an occasional Starbucks Frappucino or Espresso Truffle. I love a good sense of humor, some dry sarcastic wit, a kind and thankful heart, and a fair dose of altruistic optimism. Glass-half-empty has very little place in my life. I am not "cheap" (my husband and I would kill each other, LOL) but I love getting stuff for way less than other people paid, and I'm more than happy to share my sources.